


Who Would Not Sleep With the Brave

by RiceVermicelli



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:22:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25688773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiceVermicelli/pseuds/RiceVermicelli
Summary: Joe and Nicky go on vacation. Andy sends Booker out for mouthwash.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Booker | Sebastien le Livre
Comments: 6
Kudos: 111





	Who Would Not Sleep With the Brave

Sometimes, the lovebirds are a little tough to take. Booker reminds himself that at least he no longer has those dreams about them. Yusuf and Nicolo made him the least welcome tentmate in La Grande Armée, moaning in his sleep, soaking his bedroll, and waking up well after he’d ruined the night’s rest for his fellow soldiers, deeply embarrassed. It’s not why he deserted, but it didn’t help.

Unfortunately, not having those dreams doesn’t mean that sleep is an entirely Joe & Nicky free time for him. His subconscious brain summons them as often as any other familiar thing. Booker feels guilty about the shred of antipathy he still carries about it. They are the best of comrades. They’ve had his back in fights beyond counting, and every contract meeting for 150 years, have handed him knives and guns in tight corners, have hauled his corpse to safety after battle. He would do the same for them. He has. But sometimes, just sometimes, he would kill for them to be an ordinary couple, to fight for real (not bicker adorably), to hurt each other just a little bit, to look at each other without getting that misty, swoony look in their eyes, to retreat to a bedroom and sulk instead of fucking bedframe after bedframe against wall after wall. 

So it is with some relief that he sees them packing up camping gear for a holiday, and offers them a ride to the Gare de Lyon. He’ll be glad to see them go, even if it means getting up at six in the morning. They are their usual insufferable selves on the drive. Skiing they say, in Montafon. Supposed to be a beautiful season for it. Perhaps a month, perhaps (unless Andy contacts them) two. Please God, thinks Booker. Make it three. He needs the break, even though they’ll come back even worse, he knows, glowing and refreshed, with another set of locations that inspire banter, smoldering gazes, and speedy retreats to more bedrooms. 

When he gets back to the apartment (a short-term rental in Montparnasse), Andy, who Booker sometimes thinks never sits down if she can help it, is leaning on the kitchen counter, sipping coffee. 

Andy subjected him to her fair share of embarrassing dreams too, with that Australian lover of hers, and sleeping across Eurasia on her way back. Somehow, it was all so very much more human. Not that it made a difference on the Russian march. Or to his wife.

“You see them off?” she asks.

“That I did.”

“Do we have any plans?”

“No.”

He gets himself a mug, and checks the fridge for milk. 

“Since when,” Andy asks him, “do you, the man so French that he located his fellow immortals by vicariously tasting local wine, put milk in your coffee?”

“Who am I, and what have I done to your negotiator?”

“The question does worry me.” She takes another sip of her coffee, and Booker contemplates her proximity to the knife block.

“I have spent the morning in traffic with the world’s truest lovers, Madame, and I cannot take any more purity at this time. Not even in coffee. Do we have sugar?”

“You can stand sugar, after the morning you’ve had?”

“I am going to make the worst coffee known to humanity, and I am going to drench it in milk and sugar. I considered whiskey, but we don’t have sufficiently terrible whiskey.”

“They can be a bit much.”

“Andy, they are not ‘a bit much.’ They are the living embodiment of a Jacques Brel song. You know the one I mean.” He hums a few bars, and sings “Quand on n’a que l’amour…” His singing voice makes Andy wince. 

“Jesus. That thing.”

“Precisely. Had he met them? I have packed them off for their 85th honeymoon, and I have a deep need to be as sleazy as possible. I may go to McDonald’s for an egg sandwich, actually, and buy coffee there. The lovers bought us unground coffee beans on their last grocery run.”

“It’s hard to get pre-ground fair trade,” Andy excuses them. Booker sighs. Immortal warriors are the world’s most concerned ethical consumers.

“After I eat my egg and cheese and bad excuse for a croissant on the street corner, I will find a seedy bookstore and buy porn. Terrible porn, with fake breasts and uncomfortable facial expressions.”

“And then you will find a whore in the Marais?” asks Andy.

“God no,” Booker swears. “Joe and Nicki would fly back from Austria so we could close down a trafficking ring. It is good work, Andy, the most important work in the world, and I cannot do it today. If I still had a wife, I would try to convince her to let me fuck her up against a wall in an alley.”

Andy perks up. “There’s a good alley about three blocks from here.”

Booker decides to push his luck. “Might I have the pleasure of your company there?”

“Mmm.” She nods. “I’ll meet you at six.”

“Would you care to accompany me now?”

“For bad food and terrible porn? Not in this weather.”

Booker takes two steps across the tiny kitchen to press her briefly to the counter, and kisses the spot where her jawline curves under her ear. His dearest friend. “Presque l’amour” he murmurs. “I’ll see you at six.”

She sips her coffee, her face cool, pretending to be unmoved. “Get some mouthwash while you’re out,” she says. “I draw the line at secondhand Croissan’wiches.”

The weather is indeed terrible, the wind is vicious, and the streets are coated with January slush. Booker wraps his scarf more firmly about his face and sets out towards the nearest McDonald’s, too pleased with himself to care.


End file.
